Chamberlain left this earth more than 12 years ago at the relatively early age of 63, and to this day it’s not completely clear whether, even at the end, he was convinced he couldn’t still play in the NBA. When he was approaching his 50th birthday in 1986, he claimed that teams had put out feelers about him, and he told the Los Angeles Times: "Maybe the average person couldn't come back and play at 50, but Wilt could come back and play. Where there's a Wilt, there's a way."

Jordan turns 50 next week, and the bug has been implanted in the public’s heads. The Lakers’ Antawn Jamison told ESPNLosAngeles.com last week, “I wouldn’t doubt that in the right situation,” Jordan could play limited minutes and score in double figures, even though he last played a real game 10 seasons ago.

Somebody had to toss the idea out there, and you had to figure it would be part of the Tar Heel fraternity, of which Jamison is a proud member. And, after all, the figure in question is larger than life, just as Wilt was.

You have to live on that exalted plane of existence to even generate that kind of discussion, without being immediate laughed out of the room. Thus, Wilt at 50. Jordan at 50. Roger Clemens at 50. Jim Brown at 47. Jim Palmer at 45. Sugar Ray Leonard at 40. Muhammad Ali at 38.

Re-read that list. Then add this to the criteria: your ego must exist on that same plane. Or, at best, your personal belief in your own immortality, even though science and most observers don’t share that opinion.

Jordan, as this most recent story recalls, said during his 2009 Hall of Fame introduction that he could see himself playing at 50, and when the audience chuckled, he admonished them, adding, “Limits, like fears, are often just an illusion.’’

Speaking of illusions …

Chamberlain genuinely believed he could not only play in the mid-1980s, but dominate a then-weak center position (before the primes of Ewing, Olajuwon and Robinson, as it turned out). Contemporaries of his from his heyday agreed with him. Even those who thought he vastly overstated how good he still was and were sure he was just bringing attention to himself, still figured that if nothing else, Wilt was sure of what he could do.

The same went for Jim Brown, who famously posed on a 1983 Sports Illustrated cover in a Raiders jersey, pads and all. Turns out that he was insulted by the possibility at the time that Franco Harris, whose toughness and running style he completely disdained, might break his career rushing record.

"Who's to say a 47-year-old can't do it? I'm not talking about being Jim Brown of 1965. I'm talking about being Jim Brown of 1984,’’ he told the magazine. “If Franco Harris is gonna creep to my record, I might as well come back and creep, too."

You might be sensing a theme here.

Fast-forward three decades, to Clemens starting on the mound for the infamous Sugar Land Skeeters. He hadn’t pitched in five years, and had been in the news more for his tangles with Congress and the federal courts over performance-enhancing drug allegations than for anything else.

"I'm nowhere close to being ready for Major League Baseball,'' he told Sports Illustrated, in one of the great “no-kidding, Sherlock” statements of all time. He lasted two games with the Skeeters.

To be fair, the aforementioned dreamers should be separated. Those who tease about coming back like Jordan, Wilt and Brown, go into one category. Those who go through with it, like Clemens, Palmer and Leonard, go into another. Palmer made an ill-fated spring-training return in 1991, seven years after his retirement, and gave SI this as one of his motivations: "I don't know if it was the Jockey ads or what, but a lot of people kept telling me I looked like I could still pitch."

As for Sugar Ray, most have tried to forget that he fought Hector Camacho in 1997, six years after his previous “retirement.’’ It didn’t go well, to put it mildly; on the bright side, it didn’t go long, either, just five rounds.

Then there was Ali, and the less said of either his fights with Larry Holmes or with Trevor Berbick, the better.

That’s some exclusive company Jordan has entered (or had someone enter him into).

Here’s an even more exclusive club he’d enter if he came back and truly succeeded, even in relation to his age. It consists of one member: George Foreman. All the returns by sports legends combined didn’t look as ridiculous as Foreman’s at the time he did it – at age 38, 10 years past his last fight, and a bald, cuddly balloon of an ex-champ.

Seven years and one thunderous right hand to Michael Moorer’s jaw later, he was champ again.

For Foreman, limits actually were an illusion.

For Jordan … right now, a decent record for the team he owns is the only illusion he should try to make real.